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Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Notes on Contributors -- Foreword by John Urry -- Preface -- Introduction: Studying (Im)mobility through a Politics of Proximity -- PART 1 CATEGORIES OF PROXIMITY/MOBILITY -- 1 Space, Mobility and New Boundaries: The Redefinition of Social Action -- 2 Mobility and the Notion of Attainable Reach -- 3 The Harvest of Dionysus: Mobility/Proximity, Indigenous Migrants and Relational Machines -- PART II DISCOURSE/IDENTITY ON PROXIMITY AND MOBILITY -- 4 The Semiotics of (Im)mobilities: Two Discursive Case Studies of the System of Automobility -- 5 Mobility After War: Re-negotiating Belonging in Jaffna, Sri Lanka -- PART III GLOBAL FIRMS/URBAN LANDSCAPES AS SCENERY FOR PROXIMITY AND MOBILITY -- 6 Human Costs of Mobility: On Management in Multinational Companies -- 7 Urban Mobility, Accessibility and Social Equity: A Comparative Study in Four European Metropolitan Areas -- 8 Mobility Practices in Santiago de Chile: The Consequences of Restricted Urban Accessibility

This book analyses patterns of mobility in relation to new possibilities of organizing space, time, and proximity to others. Different phenomena - from memorial sites to migration, from urban mobility to mobile work - are analysed, illustrating different types of proximity through mobility and immobility. In doing so, this book offers a cross-cultural and innovative theoretical framing of issues linked to mobility, through the link with immobility and proximity.

Technological discourse constitutes a crucial resource in the process of future making and construction of new technologies. Narratives of such a discourse are characterized by projection of hopes and horrors through binary frameworks that enforce technological determinism. Sources and actors of technological discourse are multiple (the mass media, professional communities, institutions, enterprises). The article aims to identify different conceptions of technology as well as different durations of future traceable in technological discourse. On the one hand, technology appears as an autonomous, atemporal force; on the other hand, it appears split between a short and a long time frame. Whereas the short-term future is shaped by the culture of capitalism with its fast-paced consumption focused on obsolescence and presentification, the long-term future is more influenced by the binary frames recurrent in both popular media and science fiction. This long future horizon in technological discourse is concerned with the expectation of a radical revolution. It fosters scenarios where anger and desire, horror and hope coexist and compete with each other. The article proposes obsolescence, presentification and revolution as three concurrent modes of production of the sociotechnical discourse on the future.

Starting from the social construction of technology approach and proposing a literature review of the concept of technological frame, the distinction or continuity between contexts inside and around technology is analyzed as constitutive of a thicker frame. A multilayered articulation of the technological frame is proposed. Organizational history, identity, interorganizational relations, along with discursive practices and communicational routines are seen as the components of the intranet technological frame. Discursive practices, therefore, mediate between macro components belonging to the organizational dimension and micro components concerning the practice of specific organizational communities or workgroups and the inscribed patterns of use through which technology is temporarily stabilized into specific artifacts. The analysis of the frame as set of practices and contexts is carried out by referring to sociotechnical literature and findings of a completed Ph.D. dissertation about intranet technology.

The article focuses on Intranet technology as the result of overlapping negotiations among social actors inside organizations. Such negotiations are aimed at establishing and embedding specific relations and representations of work, communication, and learning into the technological artifact. Two case studies are presented to analyze practices and processes of implementation and use of the Intranet. The fieldwork, carried out in two companies in Italy and the United Kingdom, shows how specific contexts and organizational histories can affect such processes. Despite the "optimistic" imagery associated with Intranet technology and the high expectations about its communicative and economic efficiency, the article points out many constraints in the process of implementation and use. Company history and culture, skills and work groups, and use of other technologies and media are relevant factors to account for the current use of the two systems and their low degree of integration into everyday working and communicative practices.

This book marks an important contribution to the fascinating debate on the role that information infrastructures and boundary objects play in contemporary life, bringing to the fore the concern of how cooperation across different groups is enabled, but also constrained, by the material and immaterial objects connecting them. As such, the book itself is situated at the crossroads of various paths and genealogies, all focusing on the problem of the intersection between different levels of scale